


It's a strong word

by StarryDreamer



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Academy Era, Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Multi-Era, Sci-Ops Era (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), early season 2 compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 01:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9212696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarryDreamer/pseuds/StarryDreamer
Summary: Hate, like and love are all strong words.  Jemma Simmons uses them all.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is another repost from FFN. I hope those of you who haven't had a chance to read it, enjoy it!

**-1-**

“He _hates_ me!”

“If he hates you so much why is he sitting outside of your room?”  

“What?” Her friend Lynn is right.  On the floor outside of Jemma’s room sits a boy about her age, his mop of blond hair is bent over the tablet he props up in his lap.  “Leopold?”

He scrambles to his feet.  She’s startled him.  Jemma Simmons rarely startles anyone and she thinks that he must not have noticed her and Lynn approaching.  

“I-- uh.”  One hand runs through his hair, the other clutches his tablet against his chest.  “It’s-- uh.  Fitz. No one… Yeah.”  He straightens himself as though he wants to appear taller.  “No one calls me Leopold.”

“Oh.  Sorry.”  She has to remind herself to smile. “Is something the matter?”  She tries keeping her voice light and airy and she can practically feel Lynn shake with laughter behind her.

“No.  I-- uh...”  He digs his free hand into his pocket and pulls out a pen, thrusting it toward her.  “Yours.”

She takes the pen between her fingers.  It _is_ hers.  It’s the pen she’d bought for two quid in the gift shop of the London Aquarium after she’d visited with her parents over summer break.  She tilts it upside down and watches the tiny plastic clownfish move from the middle of the pen toward its top.  

“Where’d you find it?”  

He shrugs.  “Class.”  

They have three classes in common: Chemistry, History and Xenology.  She doesn’t ask which and instead smiles, nodding her head.  “Thank you. It’s my favourite.”

She thinks she hears him say “I know” but he’s bent in half, tucking his tablet into his backpack.  Plus he mumbles and speaks to the floor, so she’s not entirely sure.

Jemma tries again.  “ _Amphiprion ocellaris_ are such happy creatures wouldn’t you agree?”

He stands upright, the backpack straps between his hands, and looks at her, stunned, as if he can’t believe she’s even bothered to ask him a question.  He doesn’t reply; her question simply hangs in the air.

One second passes. Then two. Three. Four. Five--

“Well, then,” she says, her smile faltering slightly.  “I should be getting inside.  I’ll see you tomorrow in class, yeah?”

He mutters something and nods, turning on his heel.   When he’s around the corner and at last out of sight, she lets the corners of her mouth fall.  

“ _Amphiprion ocellaris_?” Lynn asks, barely containing her laughter as she follows Jemma into her room.  “You couldn’t have just said clownfish?”

“It’s a defence mechanism,” she declares tossing her keys onto her desk.  “He hates me.”

“He likes you.”

“He _hates_ me.”

 

**-2-**

When her chemistry professor calls her name in the same breath as _Leopold Fitz_ she very nearly groans out loud.  

“He likes you,”  Lynn whispers from behind her, poking her in the back with her finger.

“He hates me,” she replies through clenched teeth as she reminds herself to smile.  

She considers asking the professor for a reassignment, but he’s out the door of the lecture hall before she even has a chance to stand up.

“Simmons?”

She turns.  “Hi Fitz.”

He hands her a piece of paper with a black code stamped upon it.  His mouth opens, then closes just as quickly; his hand presses at the back of his neck and his face reddens.  

Jemma raises her eyebrows, expectant; her smile never wavers but her teeth remain hidden behind her lips.  Without making a sound, Fitz points to the paper and then turns grumbling as he walks away, his tablet tucked into the crook of his arm.

“What was that all about?”

Jemma shrugs and holds the paper up so that Lynn can see.  “He gave me this.”

“Where’s your cell?”

“What?”

“Give me your cell.”

“What? Why?”

She snaps her fingers and holds her palm out, her fingers motioning for her to hand it over.  Jemma rolls her eyes and pulls her cell from her pocket, slapping it against her friend’s hand.  

Lynn nestles it between her hands and deftly swipes across the screen and taps her thumb against its corner.  After a few seconds, she takes the paper from Jemma and holds it up to the camera lens and snaps a photograph.  

“There,” she says, turning the screen back toward Jemma. It’s not the square code that stares back at her in the photograph but actual English words and numbers.  “It’s his contact information and the lab time he’s booked.”

She stares at the screen, dumbfounded.  She points to the paper in Lynn’s hand.  “But how did he even print this out?  We’ve been in class all day.”

She shrugs.  “Maybe he’s had it on him for a while and he just now mustered up the courage to give it to you?”

Jemma shakes her head.  “He probably has a printer in his backpack.”

Lynn laughs.  “You think it’s more likely he has a printer in his backpack?”

“He hates me.”  It’s becoming her mantra.

...

Jemma Simmons is never late, but for her first lab assignment with Fitz she is.  When she runs up the stairs and down the hall, she practically trips over her own feet when she sees him sitting in the hallway outside of their lab.  

“Fitz?!”

He looks up from his tablet and waves.  At least she thinks it’s a wave, but it’s entirely possible that he might’ve been swatting at a fly.

“Sorry, I’m so late,” she says breathless.  “They’ve just re-released _The Dragons of Eden_ and I wanted to pick up a copy before they sold out but--”  She inhales a deep breath.  “And I did.  Get the book, that is. But then this darling old woman began to tell me about how she’d met Carl Sagan when she was at university and as you can imagine I had so many questions about the--”

“It’s fine,” he says, interrupting as he pushes himself to his feet.

“What?”

He motions to the lab and opens the door behind him, making room for her to enter first.  “We only have forty minutes left.”

“Oh.”  It takes her a beat before she realizes that her smile has fallen.  She forces the corners of her lips back upward.  “Of course.  Let’s go, then.”

They spend the next forty minutes in almost complete silence working on their respective parts of the analysis.  Fitz bumps her arm a few times and when she looks up thinking he has something to tell her, his only reply is a muted and mumbled apology.  

“How did it go?” Lynn asks over dinner later in the mess hall.

“He barely said two words to me the entire time!”

“So he still likes you then?”

She shakes her head.  “He still hates me.”

 

**-3-**

“He once sued Apple.”

Jemma looks up from her notations and props her goggles onto the top of her head.  “What?”  

Fitz lowers his eyes.  “Carl Sagan.  He once sued Apple Computers.”

“Really?”  She smiles.  “I didn’t know that.”

“He didn’t like that they’d used his name in their internal code and sued them.”  His eyes dart upward to meet hers briefly before returning to the metallic parts he holds stiffly in his hands.  “So Apple renamed the code BHA.”

She cocks her head and furrows her brows.  “BHA?”

A smile pulls at his lips.  “For Butt-Head Astronomer.”

She can’t help herself and bursts out laughing, her body practically vibrates from the hilarity of his reveal.  

“That’s so funny, Fitz,” she says when she’s able to breathe again.   “Thank you for telling me that.  Is it really true?”

He nods, blushing, never quite meeting her eyes.  “Completely.”  He points to the beaker rack in front of her.  “You know if we arrange your carbon allotropes using the nanotech mechanochemistry I developed, it should pressurize it but still allow the flexibility to be maintained.”

Jemma stares at him, agape.  

He turns away from her and rummages through his tool box.  She can see the redness at the back of his neck.  “I mean… we don’t… you don’t-- it’s not…” He stutters out while speaking to the wall.

“That’s a fantastic idea, Fitz!” She declares, her smile wide as she claps her gloved hands together. “Do you have it here?  Do we have time tonight?”

He faces her, a tight, embarrassed expression upon his face.  “Yeah.  Sure.  Um-- I have it here. You really want to see it?  I mean see the… er, you want to try Brownie?”

She laughs.  “You named it?”

His face reddens further.  “After eyes.  I named it after brown… Eyes.”  His voice fades.

“But you have blue eyes.”

He raises his chin and squares his shoulders a bit.  “I know.”

Jemma doesn’t question him further, and when Lynn later asks after her lab partner, for the first time, she doesn’t cringe.  This time she smiles brightly.  

“I think he has a girlfriend.”

“A girlfriend?  I thought he liked you?”

Jemma shakes her head.  

“So he still hates you?”

She shakes her head again.  “No.  I think he likes me, just not _likes me_ -likes me, you know?  Besides, as I said, I think he has a girlfriend.”

Lynn’s eyebrows raise as she watches her friend.  “What makes you think that?”

“He named his nanotech Brownie after her brown eyes.”

“You have brown eyes.”

“Mine are more amber coloured than brown.”

Lynn gives her a look.  “To a guy they are brown.”

“In any case, over 55% of the world’s population has brown eyes.”

She sighs.  “So are you _friends_ now?”

Jemma nods, partially shrugging her shoulders.  “Yes, I think so.  He’s very interesting to talk to.  He’s quite brilliant.”

“As smart as you are?”

She laughs.  “Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” she teases.

 

**-4-**

“Bloody hell!”  Jemma declares as she snatches her underwear from under the bed.  “Bloody, bloody hell.”

“What’s wrong?”  A mess of dark hair and dark features stare at her from the bed, almost laughingly.  

She tugs her leggings on and flattens her oversized sweater over her hips. “Why didn’t you tell me that it was after ten?”

He smiles wide, all teeth and no sense. “I figured that since we were having so much fun--”

Jemma motions with her phone in her hand.  “I was meant to meet Fitz twenty minutes ago.”  She stares down at the stream of text messages on her phone’s lock screen and quickly types a reply to the most recent one.

_Coming. Don’t leave._

“What, is he your boyfriend or something?”

She narrows her eyes and glares at him.  “No Dylan, he is not my _boyfriend_.”  Even she can hear the annoyance in her voice.  “He is my friend and now I’m late meeting him because you turned off my alarm.”

Jemma grabs her keys from the night table and looks quickly around the room ensuring that she hasn’t forgotten anything.

“Can I call you?”  Dylan asks, his bed sheet draped ever so conveniently across his waist.  

“I graduate in a month.”

“I thought you were a freshman?”

“I am.”

He looks impressed.  “So can I call you then?”

She shakes her head and opens the door to his room.  “I told you, I graduate in a month.”  

“But--”

Jemma doesn’t wait to hear his reply as she’s out the door and down the hall before he even has a proper chance.  As she races across campus toward the library she can’t help but wonder if anyone has ever done research on the correlation between muscle mass and conventional attractiveness to one’s I.Q score.

“You’re thirty minutes late,” Fitz notes sourly as he rises from the steps outside of the library’s main doors when she approaches.   

“I know,” she says, panting.  “I’m so sorry.  I was with Dylan Teale.  He turned the alarm off on my phone.”

“ _Another_ meathead?”  He asks as he holds the door open for her and follows her into the library.

“Meathead?” She stops in her tracks and plants her hands on her hips.  “What’s that supposed to mean?  What’s a meathead?”

“It’s a muscular git who can barely hold an intelligent conversation while insisting on wearing t-shirts that are much too small.”

Jemma frowns, considering his explanation.  “He has an extremely low body fat percentage.”

“So a meathead then?”

Her lips pull upward as she tries to hold back her laughter.  “His face is symmetrical.”

“You slept with him because he has a symmetrical face?”  He’s practically shouting and Jemma cringes from embarrassment, shushing him.  He continues: “ _My_ face is symmetrical and you’re not sleeping with me.”

“I didn’t sleep with him because he had a symmetrical face, you dolt,” she hisses, pulling him from the crowded entryway, her face crimson.  “Well, it wasn’t the only reason.  And for the record your face is not symmetrical, you have a scar.”  She reaches toward his face and pokes at his forehead just below the hairline.  “Right there. And your left eyebrow is slightly lower than your right one.”

Fitz huffs and begins to walk away. “Well at least I’m not a meathead.”

She smiles and shakes her head, jogging slightly to catch up with him.  She hooks her arm into his.  “You’re definitely not a meathead.  You, unlike Dylan the Meathead, are not boring.”

“I’m not?”

She shakes her head. “And intelligence is weighed heavier than attractiveness in my book.”

Fitz frowns and gives her a quizzical look.  “Wait.  Is that a compliment or an insult?”

Jemma laughs.  “A compliment, obviously.  Dylan’s not the one getting into SciOps after only one year of the Academy, you are.  We both are.  Besides you have my phone number and can call me whenever, he doesn’t and can’t.”

“Ah.  So you don’t like him then?”  

“God, no.  I mean he’s nice, but-- No.”  She shakes away the memory of Dylan’s blank look when she’d mentioned that she had been studying synano samples. “For what it’s worth, Fitz I am sorry that I was late.  I really didn’t mean to be.”

He nods.  “It’s fine.”  His cheeks are tinged pink and Jemma can’t help but wonder if he’s getting sick.  “Next time you’re with a meathead, put a lock code on your phone, okay?”

She smiles, the creases of her cheeks deepen.  “Deal.”

 

 **-5-**    

“For me?”  Jemma asks shaking the wrapped box near to her ear.  “But I thought we’d agreed no gifts this Christmas?  What happened to being all professional and impressive and _serious_?”

Fitz blushes as he kicks the door to the fridge closed.  “I know, but SciOps doesn’t need to find out.  I saw it online and had to buy it for you.”  He puts her beer on the coffee table and keeps his in hand, taking a seat next to her on the couch.

“Can I open it?”

He gives her a look.  “Of course.  I wouldn’t have given it to you if I didn’t want you to open it.”

“But it’s not Christmas yet.”  

“Then pretend that it is.”

“We don’t even have a tree.”

“Jemma--”

She laughs.  “Right. I’ll just open it then.”  She tears into the paper as Fitz takes a long drink of his beer.  

“Is this…?”  She’s stunned and turns the book over in her hands.  “Carl Sagan’s _The Dragons of Eden_?”  She looks up at him.  “It’s not…?”  

He nods, barely containing his own smile as he watches her gingerly open the hard, yellowed and worn cover of the book.  

“It’s autographed!”

“It is.”

Her heart is practically in her throat as her fingers flip to the verso page. “Fitz?”

He takes another drink of his beer.  “Hm?”

“It’s a first edition…”

He nods.

She thrusts the book toward him, nearly knocking the bottle from his hand.  “I can’t take this.”

Fitz pushes it back.  “Of course you can.  I bought it for you.”

“It’s too expensive.”

“I sold another design.”

Her mouth opens and closes; she’s speechless for once, unable to find an appropriate rebuttal.  “It’s wonderful,” she decides on at last.  “Thank you.”  She leans forward and presses her lips to his cheek.  “But you really shouldn’t have.”

He shakes his head.  “I couldn’t resist.  So you don’t hate it?”

She laughs.  “No. I don’t hate it,” she says staring at the book clutched between her fingers.  “I love it.”

“And you don’t hate me for buying it?”

Jemma shakes her head.  “I could never hate you.”

 

**-6-**

Fitz is barely out the door when Skye declares, “You like him.”

Jemma smiles.  “Of course I like him!  He’s my best frie--”

“I mean you _like him_ -like him.”  

She scoffs and looks away, her face burning as she forces her voice to sound airy.  “That is ridiculous!”

Skye looks up from her computer and turns in her chair, facing Jemma.  “Is it?”

Her stomach practically leaps into her throat and she desperately searches for a witty retort.  She comes up empty.

“That’s what I thought.”  

“We’re just friends,” Jemma reasons.

“So?”

“He doesn’t like me like that.”

“Has he ever said that?”

Jemma shakes her head. “No.”

She makes a face.  “Well then…”

“You don’t know Fitz… He’s… He’ll…” She sighs.  “Now’s not the time.  We’ve just arrived at Providence... so much has changed.”  Jemma smiles tightly.  “Fitz doesn’t like change.”

“That’s exactly why you should tell him how you feel.  He’ll like that kind of change.”

“And if I’m wrong?  He’ll hate me.”

Skye shakes her head.  “No, I don’t think so.”

Her heart thumps once as she considers Skye's advice.  Twice. Three times.  “Now’s not the right time,” she says at last.

 

**-7-**

“He should hate me!”

Skye tilts her head and studies Jemma.  “We’re all pretty sure he’s in love with you.”

Jemma shakes her head.  “He shouldn’t be. I make him worse.”

“You do no such thing.”

She swallows the lump in her throat and takes a deep breath, willing herself not to cry.  She’d already been crying far too much lately.  “It’s true.  Even Mack said as much.”

“Well then, Mack’s an idiot.”  Skye types in a command and pulls up the security feed on her laptop.  She turns the screen toward Jemma and points to Fitz who is sitting on the floor outside of her room.  His hand rests upon his shoulder and his mouth moves ever so slightly, clearly muttering to himself as he’d been wont to do.  

“He _has_ gotten better,” Skye notes softly.  “I mean since you’ve returned that is.”

Jemma shrugs, her eyes lowered. The evidence to the contrary stares back at her as her teeth gnaw at her bottom lip.

“Did you wind up giving him--”

“No,” Jemma interrupts quickly, shaking her head.  “He’d think it was stupid.”

Skye pushes her bottom lip out and frowns.  “I really doubt that.”

“He probably doesn’t even remember.”

“We’re talking about Fitz.  He remembers everything.” She chuckles. “You were the one who told me he has a photographic memory.”

“He’ll think it’s stupid,” she repeats.

“Simmons!”

“Fine,” Jemma grumbles and stands up, wiping her palms against her pants.  “I still think it’s a bad idea.”

Skye closes the lid to her laptop.  “And _I_ still think you’re in love with him and are too scared to tell him as much and are using a gift to speak for you instead.”

Jemma screws up her face.  “I hate you, you know that right?”

Skye grins.  “No you don’t.  Cause you know I’m not wrong.”

…

“Hey,” Jemma says softly as she slides down to the floor next to Fitz.  

“Hi.”

“I have a present for you.”  Her heart thumps heavily in her chest, her nerves causing her hand to shake slightly as she holds up a small gift bag.

“You?” He shakes his head slightly.  “I mean, for… me?”  Fitz corrects more slowly.

She smiles and nods remembering the advice Mack had given to her to not interrupt him and he takes the bag from her.   

“It’s good you didn’t wrap... It. The gift with paper.”  His finger tugs a bit at his ear and his face pinks slightly.  “My fingers, you know…”

She bites at her bottom lip and tries to smile.  “I know.”

Fitz pulls at the tissue paper, discarding it at his side and looks into the bag.  “Jemma?”

She smiles softly, watching him.  Her heart beats faster and harder; she wonders if he can hear it.   

He reaches inside the bag and pulls the pen out, his eyes alight and his lips wide.  

“ _Amphiprion ocellaris._ ”  

Jemma can’t help but laugh, the tension in her body that she’d bottled up for weeks, finally releases.  “Do you like it?”

He nods as he tilts the pen, watching as the plastic clownfish swims toward the pen’s middle.  “I love it.  It’s perfect.  Practice.”  His blue eyes meet her own brown ones and she lets him correct his mistake.  “I’ll use it… to practice. Writing.”

She grins wide and leans in a bit closer allowing her arm to press against his.  “I’m glad,” she says.  “That you like it,” she adds.

He shakes his head, tilting the pen again.  “No. I love it.  It reminds me..." He points to her. "Of you.”

“You think I’m like a clownfish?” She asks with renewed laughter upon her voice.

He nods, shrugging his shoulders.  “They’re happy creatures. Like you.”

 

**-8-**

“Fitz!” She cries out exasperated, her hands pressing against her cheeks. “Where are you?”

“Over here,” he says stepping out from the shadow of their bedroom door at the top of the stairs.  His eyebrows flash and he lowers his voice.  “I was waiting for you.”

She looks upward as her cheeks redden and her heartbeat begins to race.  “ _Bloody hell_ ,” she mutters, shaking her head of the sultry image he’s just put into her mind.  “Darling, I think you need to come out here,” she continues, singsonging from the bottom of the stairs.  “Mrs. Miller was just at the door and she says that your son has gone and shot a rocket through her window.  Again.”

“What?!”

Jemma nods.  Her words are pronounced, hoping that the flaxen haired boy that sits in the other room hears her.  “I’ve already paid for the repairs, but perhaps you could come and speak to your son and remind him not to play with his rockets outside of our neighbours’ houses.”  

“Andrew!”  Fitz calls out warningly, joining Jemma in her theatrics as he descends the stairs.  

When he passes Jemma at the bottom step, he tugs her gently by the arm, pulling her behind a bookshelf, out of sight.

“He’s... He’s exactly like you, you... You know that right?” He whispers softly, a grin upon his face as he presses his body against hers.

She clicks her tongue and frowns.  “ _Me?_ ”  Her arms wrap at his waist, pulling him closer.  “For the record, I never shot rockets through my neighbour’s window when I was little.  If anything that sounds a bit more like something you’d do.”

He chuckles against her skin.  “I’m not the one who caused... Caused her parents’ shed to catch fire, am I? ”

Jemma gasps and playfully slaps her hand against his side.  “Leopold Fitz, how dare you bring that up.  It was meant to be buried, never to be heard of--”  Fitz steals her of her words with his lips and she relents under his touch.  

Her hands inch up his back, tugging at his shirt, grounding him back in reality.  They still have a problem that they need to deal with.

“Do we have to?” He mutters slowly against her lips.

“Yes, of course,” she replies with a smile.  “We can’t be the weird science family who blows other people’s houses up.”

Fitz laughs.  “Why not?  

"You're incorrigible."

"You love it."

"No," Jemma says pressing lips against the corner of his mouth. "I love _you_."


End file.
